One of Prince George’s signature summer events is coming back in a big way.
Canada Day at Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park is back for a 49th year and is organized by the Prince George Multicultural Heritage Society.
However, some fresh new faces plan to take the event to a whole new level this year.
Dave Mothus is among a group of individuals that also includes Kyle Sampson, Aimee Cassie, Craig Briere, and Dawna Varley who have stepped up.
Mothus told MyPGNow.com it’s a staple event that everyone looks forward to.
“We don’t have a lot of things that we do as a community and we don’t really have a focal point. If you go to Kamloops everybody goes to their park, hang out all summer long and there is music but here, Canada is one of the few things we have where we all kind of come together.”
Earlier this week, Societies Coordinator Marlies Greulich noted members have been struggling to put together the same event due to a number of factors.
These include:
- A loss of volunteers
- A loss of connections with service providers
- Increased costs
However, Mothus was also quick to point out funding was not a stumbling block in putting this event together.
“It’s not that they had no budget, it’s not that it had no opportunity – they had received grants from the city and provincial government. But, grants are no good if you don’t have a team of people to book the entertainment, book the vehicles for the food to come in, and get all the volunteers for cleaning up. That’s what went wrong.”
“They had one paid staff member whose health is suffering a little bit so she is not as capable of doing as much as she did in the past. She desperately wanted to save it but just nobody steps up anymore, all the volunteers are gone from many of these organizations.”
“The grant money was around $25,000 or $30,000 and half of that goes to administrative costs. Over the year, you have to rent out an office and have staff paid to take care of it. So, really the grant money was around $15,000 and what we currently got pledged and put into this is closer to $50,000,” added Mothus.
He added with an excess in funds accumulated, Mothus stated they are now in a position to make this the best Canada Day celebration the city has ever seen.
“Right now, I am really excited to say we actually have the potential to make this a bigger and better event than anyone in the city has ever seen and that is what’s really exciting.”
“If we can get a bit more (funding) the only thing it means is that we can start looking at a headliner act for the first time ever. It means we can start looking at enhanced things from outside the community.”
200 vendors?
Dyanne Lybbert is the Manager of the PG Farmers’ Market who is helping out with getting vendors in place for this year, setting an ambitious goal in the process.
“We would love to bring 150 to 200 vendors if we could. We have the space for it because it’s the whole park and realistically, even a 100 vendors would be fabulous.”
“Prince George is such a vast community with so many cultures, so many people and so many wonderful things that I would love to be able to showcase it all. We have so much variety in Prince George and working at the Farmers’ Market I have seen more of that than I have before. I would love to see the variety out at Canada Day to celebrate.”
Lybbert said once everything is in place, it should be a very good mix of vendors who attend.
“There is going to be a food pavilion with food trucks and the multicultural society’s food vendors and I am doing any other vendors that end up coming.”
Anyone interested in becoming a vendor can email [email protected] with the deadline to submit your form set for June 20th.
“That is still pretty tight because that is less than two weeks before the event but June 20th is my cutoff for vendors. That gives me enough time to organize a good place for everybody and work through any other issues.”
Canada Day celebrations will begin at 11 am.
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